Tech Tuesday #2, 6th January, 2015

Hello again. For this instalment of Tech Tuesday I have assumed most of you are watching and listening to the grape vine as the tech show goes on in Las Vegas, so I thought I would give a swift overview of the show so far and my take on it, I will probably go into more detail next week.

The main thing that caught my eye wasn’t a device per say but more what the majority of products were designed to do and the need for simple connectivity that almost everything there needs, including plant pots! Why do we need everything connected? In my view plant pots or a dog collar talking to the internet is a bit over the top. Saying that maybe it’s me, maybe being quite a private person who enjoys being unconnected a fair bit of the time is why I don’t get it. But really, is there anyone who really cares about their dog’s vitals on a daily basis? Do you want to track how much exercise your pooch is getting per day? Isn’t it easier to just take him/her for at least three good long walks a day – in the safe knowledge that it will be good for you and good for the dog! As fellow dog owners know only too well, he/she will whine if you haven’t taken them out enough and when you have exercised them enough they will be tired and want to sleep, so this gismo seems a bit pointless. Same with the plant pots looking after itself – surely the point of having plants is that you put them in places to look at and enjoy the colours and fragrance – part of the enjoyment is to care for them, water them and learn how to get them to thrive? Sorry but I just don’t get this kind of ‘tech’ or gismo – apparently much at the show is all about freeing up time – to do what then? So instead of watering our plants we can have time to tweet more? Or whatever people do (I’ll be honest, I have no idea what folk prefer to do – I live on a hill!)
The other gadgets to be found are bracelets, rings and watches that link to the internet and act as a phone receiver and the like. Again I have to ask, why? We have phones, we have devices on us which connect to everything at all times anyway so why would you want a device that takes away that remaining sliver of detachment, that is the pocket, and have something that is attached to you at all times – enough to drive you cyber nuts – imagine a thing attached to you, telling you that someone has tweeted this or someone has liked that – it makes no sense and I mean no sense from both a business and family perspective – emotionally dangerous in my view. I think the thing I’ve realised from the show so far is that the developers assume that people don’t want to just exist, now that want to be connected 24/7 so they make a load of stuff that will mean you don’t have to do anything – don’t check your plants yourself, don’t look at your dog with your own eyes – don’t trust your own judgement on your own well being – all must be validated by a gadget and your value is measured by how you are ‘connected’.
Anyway, this week I thought I would have a look at the technology in my house (I know crazy), as some of you may have seen from our YouTube channel or from last week’s tech Tuesday I’m on the YouTube band wagon, and in being on that wagon I thought it was prudent to have a look at PSN (playstation net work) This topic kind of links to what I was saying above. There have been around 10 million ps4 sold since their release. Playstation have sold around 40% more than Xbox one, roughly, but that not really the story (unless you’re one of those console warriors, if you are I have no words …..) I think it’s fair to say out of that ten million I reckon at least 8 million have Playstation plus on top of that. That got me thinking, I wonder how many from the 150 million psn players pay for playstation plus aswell? Let’s just for argument sake say half of them do – why not so there is around 75 million playstation plus users paying – so that’s 30 billion going into Sony for PS plus – I realise this won’t be the actual sum but whatever number it is you get the point – PS is making an absolute racket of money from their paid subscriptions that you have to have to pay if you want to play games online now. I don’t have an issue with the money per say – it is a subscription for a service but what I do have an issue with is the fact that PS Plus as a service sucks. It gives me errors so I can’t use the party chat if I’m on the same network as someone, it is slow, ponderous and intermittent when, with that kind of money pouring in, it really shouldn’t be- they should be using the money to rapidly improve the service. Hackers put their attention to attacking big companies who are now making more money than some countries and they are just an irritation to those big companies – the only ones getting really screwed are us – people who pay out our money to use the consoles we bought, over the internet we pay for – Sony should be building something amazing now will last the test of time and be able to get ahead of things – they should invest these vast sums of money now and not be using playstation simply as a cash cow to prop up the rest of its crumbling empire. Anyway that’s what I’ve been thinking about tech wise this week. As always, I hope you have a good week. If you feel inclined to help us by sharing any of my stuff from blog to YouTube video or maybe buying my first short story that would be amazing and much appreciated. If you don’t agree with me, then that’s fine, I just hope I have given you something to think about. Have a good week.